At the center she put emancipation from sensuality:
To be free of sensuality means great power in a woman. Only in this way will she be independent of a man. Otherwise she will always long for him and in the exaggerated yearning of her senses she will be able to drown out all feeling of her own value. She becomes the bitch, who begs even if she is beaten - a strumpet. It is a different thing if through the muting of all other instincts, the one instinct has become a power in her, i. e., when she is only “female.”
Otherwise eternal battling. And every victory of the senses a Pyrrhic victory, bought with loathing, ever deadly loathing afterwards.
And a man wants a woman calm and superior to these low instincts, of whose power he is only too well aware in himself. Everyone loves that which is higher.
(Quoted from page 244 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.)
For a brief biography of Karen Horney, click here. For images of and related to Karen Horney, click here.
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